Lately, I’ve been posting over at G+. It’s been longer-than-Twitter-shorter-than-blog type half-baked posts. But I think this warrants a blog post. In Nora England and B’alam Mateo-Toledo’s endangered languages class, we were discussing the issue of getting community members—most particularly kids, the lynchpin of language revitalization—to care about their endangered language. And most particularly, to …
So, I need to always revisit why I am doing a thing. In this case, grad school seems unpleasant currently, so I am trying to see what it is that I like about it. And really, it is the teaching. I very much want to do that. I am sure that I want to do …
I fear I have gone a little mad. My mind and time have been so occupied by one thing—linguistics—that I retaliate by thinking about another—games and their design—as much as I can. I am filled with a manic energy, and sleep goes by the wayside. I read for my classes as fast as I can, …
I think those are the truest self-identifications ever applied to me. Everything else about me is relatively ancillary. Yesterday, I got to take the first steps on actually being a teacher. Today, I got to resume being a student. I’m taking two classes this semester: Syntactic Theory with Barbara Fox, and History of Linguistics in …
The internet is a weirdly wonderful place sometimes. I was playing TF2 last night, and first off, I ended up playing with some of my internet idols: Lore Sjöberg and Mark Rosenfelder. I knew I was playing with Lore—both recognizing his voice and having his steam username. But when I was playing as a medic …
I sat in on a seminar at Berkeley. Fantastic. I feel like a fish back in water, my mind latching on to novel approaches to familiar problems—the Problem, really. Human language, what is its form? What are its possible forms? There are reasons I love Cyteen. The department seems to offer the most wonderful mix …
This is kind of hilariously misguided, I think. Also: moving east in two weeks. Looking forward to seeing folks.
Mark Rosenfelder, over at Zompist’s E-Z Rant Page, has just posted a very interesting review indeed. I’m glad to see him talking about this; Chomsky’s approach to data has been offending me for a while now, and Rosenfelder is one of my earliest linguistical influences, though essentially a lay one. Check it out; I’m gonna …
One can in fact view construction-based theories of syntax as upholding standards of grammar coverage that the original proponents of generative grammar abandoned, as they sought to reduce the theory’s dependence on linguistic facts. Chomsky (1995: 435) describes this shift in the goals of grammarians as follows: “A look at the earliest work from the …
I just met R.M.W. Dixon! That’s the dude who wrote Ergativity, which I keep in an honored position at my bedside. I kinda can’t deal with the awesome. The worst part? He’s been in Boulder all summer so far and is leaving tomorrow.